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Tuesday, 30 June 2015

We have five copies of Rebecca Mascull's new novel, Song of the Sea Maid, to give away to five UK residents with the most interesting and persuasive answers to this question: "What is the best novel you've ever read about science or scientists and why was it so good?"

Please leave your answers in the comments below, but also send them to readers@maryhoffman.co.uk so that winners can be contacted.

Monday, 29 June 2015

It's a great pleasure to welcome Rebecca Mascull to the blog today. Her new novel, SONG OF THE SEA MAID, isout this month and tells the haunting story of Dawnay Price, an eighteenth-century anomaly. Dawnay is an educated foundling who overcomes her origins to become a natural philosopher, setting sail for Portugal to develop her scientific theories. She discovers rather more than she anticipated, not least about herself. Tomorrow, if you're lucky, you can win a copy of the book. This interview should whet your appetite.

Rebecca Mascull (photo by Lisa Warrener)

Like her heroine, Rebecca lives by the sea, but in the east of England, with her partner Simon and their daughter Poppy. She has worked in education and has a Masters in Writing. Her first novel THE VISITORS tells the story of a deaf-blind child in Victorian Kent and was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2014. She is currently working on her third novel for Hodder.

You
weave into a single, compelling narrative a vast and fascinating array of
different material: naval battles, foundling hospitals, scurvy, scientific
voyages, religion, publishing, early theories of evolution and one huge and
memorably described eighteenth-century event which I don’t want to give away here. I
wonder where this all started for you.Was
there was a single image, or moment, or historical character that set you off?And why did you choose that exact year?(Dawnay Price is born in about 1732.)

The idea for this novel has been with me for years and in all that time I would just call it Science Novel! It all started with the What If scenario: what if someone in ages past had a brilliant scientific idea, but because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, nobody ever heard about it. As my character’s idea was linked to the theory of evolution, I thought it might be interesting to set it a good hundred years or so before Darwin, in order to explore how some groundbreaking ideas are present in the history of thought before they are brought to fruition by one seemingly isolated genius. It was just a hunch, but when I started to research the history of 17th and 18th-century science, I discovered this to be absolutely true.Then I had to decide when in the 18th-century I wanted Dawnay to live. I knew there was going to be a naval battle, so I looked into wars in that period and it turns out that Europe were at war for almost the entire century! I also knew that the Napoleonic wars have been done quite extensively in novels, so I fancied finding an aspect of 18th-century war that was less widely known. By watching Kubrick’s film Barry Lyndon, (which I sought out to experience his beautiful authentic lighting – the “huddle and glow” of the 18th-century), I stumbled across the Seven Years’ War, which I then realised was also satirised in Voltaire’s Candide, which I’d also just read for research. Once I’d chosen that period, and started to read about science and society at that time, the rest of the ingredients just fell into place.

Research photo: rigging from the age of sail
seen on the Cutty Sark at Greenwich

The
few women who did manage to engage in scientific activity during the
Enlightenment – and they are hardly household names -generally seem to have come from wealthy,
privileged backgrounds, but Dawnay starts the story a nobody with nothing,
entirely alone in the world.Why was
that important?

We all know money talks. It’s easier to be heard
when you’ve got a bit of capital and position behind you. Being heard and
recorded by history often requires a certain set of fortunate circumstances for
the speaker. Those who are disenfranchised at any point in history usually
don’t get heard. In Dawnay’s era, that list would include the poor and women,
particularly poor women. In my 20s, it occurred to me that there were very few
women in the history of great endeavours and I knew instinctively that this
could not be because of their capabilities. I assumed it was because of their
lack of education and that such ambitions would have been discouraged for
females. What I’ve realised now is that there were women doing and thinking extraordinary things, it’s just that
no one bothered to record them. Even wealthy female scientists were not taken
seriously by many, were banned from attending and certainly speaking at
scientific events, and some even had their work attributed to male colleagues
or relations. If you were poor and had no position in society, those problems
were compounded hugely. Thinking this through, I’ve come to believe that many
great ideas may have been lost in the history of thought because the thinkers
did not have the right credentials.

And from a narrative point of view, I like
my protagonists to have something to fight against! How dull it would be if
everything came easily to Dawnay…

Emilie du Châtelet (1706-1749),
French mathematician & physicist

You’ve
written a first person present tense narrative, which takes Dawnay from very
early childhood to her mid-twenties. . .was this structure and point of view a
very obvious choice for you, and how did you go about establishing Dawnay’s distinctive
voice? Did you find it a struggle to get
the right balance between readability, authenticity and pastiche? (It certainly
doesn’t read as a struggle, I hasten to add.)

I did experiment with different voices when
I started writing the first draft. I tried third person and past tense, but I
just had this image of the little girl in the street with her brother stealing
pies, and it felt like an urgent situation, in which the past tense third
person didn’t seem to fit. Once I changed it to first person present tense, it
just took on a life of its own and then I was off. Also, that idea of hidden histories and
silenced voices being heard meant that it felt imperative that Dawnay tell her
own story.

I read a lot of fiction and non-fiction written in the C18th and made notes on the conventions of prose in that era. I decided that to include them all would probably alienate a modern reader; for example, some of them are very distracting, such as the use of capitalising the initial letter e.g. Thus my Pride, not my Principle, my Money, not my Virtue, kept me Honest. In the end, I chose to give a flavour of 18th-century prose through Dawnay’s choice of vocabulary and sentence structure, rather than bash the reader over the head too much authenticity.

Why
the title?Was it your first
choice?(I wondered afterwards if you’d
considered calling it ‘The Orphan Myth’, the title of Dawnay’s unpublishable
paper on her theories of the origins of humankind, an idea before its time.)

The history of this novel’s title is quite
a chequered one! Whilst writing, it was called The Edge of the Map and was
submitted to the publisher with that title. It’s mentioned in the novel a
couple of times and sums up many of the themes. But it was felt that it didn’t
have the right appeal for the audience, so then we had to think up another. The
Orphan Myth was indeed an early possibility – well spotted! But again it was
generally felt that it had a mournful sound to it and therefore didn’t really
suit the narrative – and had those awkward ph/th sounds! We went through many
ideas, with just about everyone in the know chipping in different suggestions,
mostly revolving around mermaids and caves. Then I corresponded with Dr Jane
McKay – who lectured on mermaids – and she suggested I look at T.S. Eliot’s
Prufrock, which includes ‘”sea-girls” and the “mermaids singing each to each”.
I also consulted my trusty Dictionary of Quotations and Proverbs and found a
line from Shakespeare: the “sea-maid’s music” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream). It
was such an evocative and archaic word for mermaids and avoided, I felt, the
negative connotations of them i.e. luring men to their death, yet also being
rather girly and, of course, fairy tale-like. So, sea maid it was – and then I
realized that it would fit rather beautifully if the cave painting could be
seen as a song about our past, and that Dawnay too was a kind of sea maid (swimming
and discovering) and that the whole novel was her song. Lastly, I think it just
sounds lovely too!

How
did the process of writing and research affect your understanding of the role
played by imagination in scientific discovery?

That’s a tremendously interesting question!
I don’t have a scientific mind myself, though I have always been fascinated by
science and wished I had the brain to understand it! Yes, I do wonder if
scientists and artists have that one thing in common - that they have to
imagine truths before they necessarily find the evidence to support them. My
brother David (who has that scientific brain I lack) has always told me a lot
about theoretical physics and such things, and it’s caught my imagination many
times, with the part played by theories and ideas, for which the finding of
evidence is incredibly difficult. So, I do think some areas of science require
a creative way of thinking to come up with the ideas in the first place.

The same is true of palaeontology - the
evidence is so scant and hard to find, that many theories have come into being
over the years based on little evidence other than our own imagination of what
these bones may represent. What I discovered in my research, is that this
reliance on imagination can sometimes lead to a terrible bias towards the
discoverer e.g. in researching early humans and, in particular, cave paintings,
I found a distinct bias towards males as artists, and males in general as the
leaders of evolution. This really pissed me off!! Very recent studies have
suggested that females may have been responsible for much cave art that we see
– one very sensible suggestion
is that, even if males may have been responsible for much of the animal hunting,
it is likely that females may have been responsible for butchery, and therefore
had an intimate knowledge of animal physiology that would make them the ideal artists of the animals we see in cave paintings. This is all theoretical, of
course, but then much of what we know about early humans is based on
assumptions and theory, rather than hard fact. I just think we need to redress
the bias a little bit… For example, you may have noticed I don’t use the term
early Man and instead refer to early humans – don’t even get me started on THAT
one…

Hand print at Pech Merle

Were
you able to travel to the settings of the book yourself, and how did you come
up with the idea of Dawnay’s cave (which has intriguing echoes of King Solomon’s Mines…)?

In terms of London, I did visit the Coram orphanage Museum and also Dr Johnson’s house, to get a feel for 18th-century London. Further afield, I have spent time in both Spain and Portugal - I travelled to both countries as an 18-year-old and again spent time in Spain when I studied Spanish as part of my degree. I am a total Hispanophile - I love Spanish literature, film, music and art, as well as its history (and I know we share a love of the Spanish Civil War, Lydia!), so it was a delight to set parts of the novel in this region.Dawnay’s cave itself is a product of my
imagination. However, I did visit ancient cave art in northern Spain as a
student and saw the handprints of early humans in red paint on the cave walls
and was so moved. It has always stayed with me. I researched the many forms of
cave art and found examples of mermaids from different cultures on the walls of
caves, as well as examples of seals and fish from cultures living close to the
sea. So, it is my own invention but it is grounded in existing cave art. And
new caves are being discovered, so who knows what else is out there waiting for
us to find…?

Berlenga Island

Your
debut novel was set in the late nineteenth century, this a century
earlier. Can we expect a
seventeenth-century setting for your next book?

Ah, well, I have to say I’m not as organised as that! My brain doesn’t work very chronologically - I’d say I have a butterfly mind that flits from subject to subject. I’m currently working on Book 3 and it’s actually set in the early 20th century, beginning in 1909 and I plan to end it in 1919. I have a title, setting and an idea in mind for Book 4, but I’m really not sure when that one is going to be set - possibly 19th-century, possibly World War II… who knows! It’ll all come out in the wash.

Don't forget the competition tomorrow. You can find out more about Rebecca and her work, and read interviews with other authors about the craft of novel writing, at her website: http://rebeccamascull.tumblr.com/

Sunday, 28 June 2015

The record of history is a living thing, not just connecting people across time but ever-evolving, reflecting the changing sensibilities of those looking back. Each generation considers the past with fresh eyes, re-selecting the people, events and themes of importance and re-evaluating the motivations, implications and lessons to be learned. Sometimes it is wonderfully surprising how controversial the past can turn out to be.

One of my favourite pubs in my old stomping ground of St Albans has recently been targeted by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, which claims to be the oldest pub in the UK, dating from the eighth century, has drawn criticism for its historic name. PETA spokesperson Dawn Carr has suggested the pub be re-named to Ye Olde Clever Cocks to reflect a change in society’s attitudes.

Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, St Albans

The St Albans pub does indeed sit on the site of an old cock-pit. The round, sunken arena was still evident in the floor when I use to drink there. But although this brutal sport is occasionally still secretly organised in England, it was made illegal here in the 1830s. Today the Fighting Cocks does not celebrate or encourage cock-fighting any more than The Flying Pig in Cambridge promotes porcine parachutists, or London’s The Hung, Drawn and Quartered advocates a return to capital punishment. In fact the landlord, Christo Tofalli, claims that the Fighting Cocks is particularly animal friendly, being near the park and welcoming dogs.

PETA may be a well-motivated organization, but their suggestion completely disregards the value of social history. Sanitizing our past exploitation of animals will do nothing to prevent future abuses; possibly the reverse. Beyond that, such heritage has inherent value, worthy of respect and protection, as landlord Tofalli appreciates. ‘This is an historic building with a remarkable story behind it’ he commented. It is a story that wants to share with locals and tourists and so, I am pleased to report, he is not planning a pub name-change soon.

Sometimes however the clash of interests and perspectives can be more difficult to negotiate. Last month the remains of a German soldier, believed to be those of Private Friedrich Brandt, were put on display in a Belgian museum. Private Brandt was not a soldier of the Second World War, nor even of the Great War before it, but of the Battle of Waterloo two hundred years ago. His skeleton, less skull but with the telling discovery of a French musket-ball between his ribs, was found, traditionally enough, under a car park near the battle-site. It was the curvature of the spine that led to his unofficial identification as Private Brandt, a twenty-three year old, known to have kyphosis, from Hanover. The skeleton was subsequently put on show at the ‘Waterloo Memorial 1815’ display in a Belgian museum.

Skeleton of the Waterloo soldier,
believed to be Private Friedrich Brandt, Belgium

Within days the respected military historian, Rob Schäfer, had launched a petition, Peace for Friedrich Brandt, asking to have the bones removed from display and respectfully reburied. Schäfer is able to picture the young Brandt in the early 1800s, feeling ‘as though he were on the adventure of a lifetime’ as he left his Hanover home to make his way to the ports of the German North Sea. He would have then ventured across the channel and completed his training in the - to him very alien - environment of East Sussex, before fighting alongside his English counterparts at Waterloo. ‘Friedrich’s compatriots would have buried him with honour’, Schäfer argues compellingly, before asking whether it is no less our duty to do the same.

Yet Françoise Scheepers, director of the Belgian Tourist Office for Brussels and Wallonia, has stated that the purpose of the memorial display was ‘not to shock but to pay tribute’. The museum is non-profit making, so there is no commercial exploitation. By humanizing the story of the Battle of Waterloo, their display hopes to engage young people with their history, helping them to appreciate that the soldiers were not just statistics but the ‘people made of flesh and bones’ with whom Schäfer can already empathise so well.

The Battle of Waterloo
(Image courtesy of Rob Schaefer)

Voltaire famously argued that ‘we owe respect to the living. To the dead we owe only the truth’. Do we teach disrespect to the living by displaying the bones of the dead, or do we teach history? Private Brandt signed up to fight the French under Napoleon, not to champion the teaching of history or the humanity of his fellow-fallen. However, in life he also sought adventure rather than peace. If he has no traceable descendents, who is to say whether a quiet burial would be a mark of greater respect than his redeployment to promote an understanding of the cause for which he gave his life? I would certainly prefer to be useful post-mortem, but I doubt that such a role was something Private Brandt envisaged or would have aspired to.

More broadly, what is it that makes the display of Private Brandt’s remains so much more provocative than those of the Ancient Egyptians, or other human reliquary? At what point, if ever, and under what terms, do bones become historic artifact rather than human remains? Is it the relatively young age of Private Brandt's skeleton, or is it something else that makes this display seem so disrespectful, such as the familiarity of his name? Or is it the fact that we have marked so many military anniversaries recently and honoured so many dead, and because we have developed such a culture of respect for fallen military heroes?

Both animal rights and respect for human remains are important issues that comment on people’s capacity for empathy, altruism, and the value of respect. Engagement with history demands similar qualities. While we must be careful not to impose modern sensibilities on our appreciation of the past, without a degree of respect and an attempt at empathy, any engagement loses meaning. The only thing that is absolutely clear is that sometimes it is the dialogue we have with history itself that is as important as the facts and artifacts of the past. Unless we ask the questions, unless we consider, criticise and debate not just the facts and stories, but the interpretations placed upon them and the uses made of them, history will itself become dead and meaningless.

Saturday, 27 June 2015

This is Jami Attenberg, a young Brooklyn novelist who is as good as they all wish they were. You may have seen her earlier novel The Middlesteins, which dismembers a 'typical' American Jewish family and their entanglement in food and love and fear and greed and insecurity and their mother, who is, perhaps, or perhaps not, eating herself to death. I liked this book so much I did that sneaky thing a novelist can do in this miraculous century - I located the author, and met her, and got to be her friend.

When I did so, Jami was in the middle of the novel which has just come out: Saint Mazie. She talked about this woman, Mazie Gordon, who was angelic and diabolical and may have written a memoir of her extraordinary life, only probably not, and how she, Jami, had realised that if it didn't exist she wanted to write it - and I would prod her, transatlantically, willing her to get on with it, so that I could get on and read it.

Mazie Phillips Gordon was a 'well-known figure', as they say, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 20s and 30s. She was a fallen-saintly cinema-keeper, owning and operating a seedy movie house called the Venice, at 209 Park Row, where after 13-hour stints selling tickets, perusing the neighbourhood and talking to all comers, she would go out and help the ruined men of the Depression who gathered in that area.

Mazie has survived into the modern imagination really only because in 1940 Joseph Mitchell published an essay about her in the New Yorker.'Mazie has a genuine fondness for bums,' says the intro to the article, 'and undoubtedly knows more bums than any other person in the city. This tells about her movie house to which bums are admitted free; about her Samaritan tours of the Bowery and environs distributing change to the bums; dragging the drunk ones to flop houses, calling an ambulance, when one has been injured. Fanny Hurst (a novelist) visits Mazie frequently, and admires her greatly. "She's the most compassionate person I've ever known. No matter how filthy, or drunk or evil-smelling a bum may be, she treats him as an equal," she said.

Mazie with her bums: 'She's a drinker, a smoker, a fighter, and a caregiver'

'She seemed like she’d be a real hoot,' Jami says. 'I don’t know how to write without humor. I’m of the school of thought that if you wait long enough everything eventually gets funny. And it was Mazie’s sense of humor that I originally connected to in the original article. I imagine in part it was that sense of humor that helped her to deal with these men. It felt necessary to me to write her that way. But I did set out with the intention of writing some heartbreak in this book. I wanted to kill characters off! I think after the last book, where you spend 300 pages wondering whether the protagonist [Edie, the intensely fat mother in The Middlesteins] will live or die by the end, I wanted to make some life and death things happen throughout. I approached the book with the intention of expressing the ideas of compassion and empathy and hopefully that filters through.'

Given that Maizie was real, I ask, and that the way you tell her story rings so true - how much did you need to invent?

'I invented everything!' Jami says. 'I mean I knew where she worked and that she had two sisters and a brother-in-law and that she was known as The Queen of the Bowery and helped homeless men for decades. But the book is really her origin story, how she got to what little bit I did know about her. I’m glad you think it rings true though.'

The New York Observer quotes Jami as saying that Mazie felt like a piece of New York she didn't want people to forget about, and if Mazie is a compelling heroine so too is New York, equally flawed and equally heartbreaking. 'It’s a rough and tumble place, full of people from all over the world,' Jami says. 'It scales high and low and everything in between. An excellent place to drink gin.' And she has peopled it with some glorious characters - an on/off lover, The Captain, who sends the postcards Mazie pastes inside her kiosk; George the neighbour, her heartbreaking brother-in-law and impossible sisters. They come to life through Mazie's diaries and letters, and in interviews conducted by Nadine, a young modern film-maker who is conducting what is turning into a kind of oral history project, and the hipster who found the mythological 'memoirs'. It could be a mess but it is extremely readable, a full-on page turner, with the mood of one of those tender-hearted madcap wise-cracking 1930s comedies. If they made a film of this you'd want Myrna Loy, Buster Keaton and Louise Brooks to be in it, and Jimmy Cagney and Pat O'Brien, and Gloria Grahame and Mae West - all the grand old sassy dames and poignant over-coated guys.

'Most of the minor characters just showed up and hung around for a while,' Jami says, 'offering me up a tidbit of information here and there about Mazie, until, maybe 100 pages later, I knew exactly what I was going to do with them. The only person who was mostly fully formed from the outset was George Flicker, Mazie’s neighbor. Because I needed someone from the same streets as her to talk to me.'

She does really take you to those streets. I ask her how she gets there: 'For Mazie, I read a lot of books! Lots of non-fiction books and some photo books and also I watched films from the era and little clips of things on Youtube. I found a great website that had audio recordings from the era. Basically anything that put me in the room.

'My best ideas occur to me when I’m away from the computer, away from reading, away from consuming information, people, culture. It’s the quiet time, the downtime, when my brain is allowed to process everything, that I find the ideas rising to the surface. But I need all the consumption of everything else first in order to get to the place where an idea might exist. So the ideas come from the noise and the silence working together.'

Extract from Saint MazieMazie’s Diary, September 12, 1916On the way home from work who did I see but our littleJeanie twirling around on a street corner. I stood off to theside and watched her for a while in her candy-colored tutu.Our little sweetheart. Her cheeks were flushed pink from thesun. Our father loved to dance, is what I was thinking. Youcan’t dance on the street forever, is also what I was thinking.But I want her to anyway.

Mazie’s Diary, September 23, 1916Tonight I met two sailors from California. San Franciscoseems so far away, how can it even be real? One was tall andone was short and that’s all I can remember. Names, I don’tknow. I got so many names in my head all the time.They said New York reminded them of home, it being soclose to the water. But in San Francisco the mist and the fogcome off the ocean so thick you can’t see one foot in front ofyou, that’s what they told me.I said they were lying, and they laughed.I said: What’s so funny?But then they never answered.I danced with the tall one while the short one watchedus, smiling hard. He looked like he was burning up. Whenthe tall one dipped me, the tie from his uniform tickledmy face. I love a man in uniform. Any kind. I think theywalk taller when they got something formal to wear. Whenthey got a place to go. The tall one asked me how old Iwas.I said: Old enough.He said: Old enough for what?Then they both laughed at me some more. But I’m oldenough for anything. They don’t know but I know.The tall one tasted salty when I kissed him but later I sawhim holding hands with the short one. They were so slim andpretty in their uniforms. Sometimes I just want a uniform ofmy own.

George FlickerShe was unapologetic about who she was and haughty tothose who questioned her, even if they didn’t say anything outloud. Like my mother for example. The two of them did notlike each other at all. People sometimes think “chutzpah” isa compliment but not the way my mother said it. Sometimesshe would cross to the other side of the street when she sawMazie coming, and she did not do it quietly. She coughedand she stomped. My mother was a tremendous noisemaker.If Mazie cared she didn’t show it. Once I heard her shout,“More room for me,” after my mother had sashayed her wayacross the street.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1916Jeanie bought me a birthday present, a pretty dark purplebow, nearly the color of the night sky. I asked her where shegot the money, and she told me she saved every penny fromdancing next to Bella.She said: She lets me keep a penny for every ten we make.I said: That doesn’t seem fair.She said: It was her idea to have the show in the first place.Bella says people with the brains make the money.I said: You got brains.She said: I just love to dance.I asked her how much change she had and she told me itwas a lot. I told her I’d show her where I hid you if she’dshow me where she hid her change.I said: We could trade secrets.Jeanie showed me all the change she had, a few bills at least.Hidden in her suitcase in the closet, the same suitcase we usedwhen we came to town from Boston. I asked her if she wassaving for anything. She didn’t say anything. I told her shecould tell me anything, that she was my sweetheart, my littlegirl. Finally she got very close to my ear.She said: I wouldn’t want to go forever, but I’d like to jointhe circus.I told her I’d come with. I’d ride on top of a horse with acrown on my head and she’d be an acrobat and fly high upabove me. The Phillips Sisters, the stars of the show. All themen would swoon at our feet. That part I liked the best but Ididn’t tell her that.Jeanie said: But what would Rosie say?I said: She wouldn’t say anything. She’d just be in the audienceclapping like everyone else.Jeanie said: Do you think that’s true? Wouldn’t she miss us?I said: We’re just daydreaming here, Jeanie. Don’t ruin it.Jeanie said: All right. I guess she’d be in the front row then.I said: She’d be our biggest fan.Mazie’s Diary, November 7, 1916I have to work in the candy shop again today. Boring. Onlylittle kids coming in there all day long, dirty change, stickypaws. The bell rings on the front door and I look up and it’sthe same thing over and over. I feel like a dog when that bellrings. Waiting for someone to feed me with something interestingto look at.I’d rather be running errands for Louis at the track. I likethe track. There’s grass and trees, blue sky cracking aboveus, but then everyone’s smoking cigars, too. I like the way itsmells clean and dirty at the same time. Plus everyone’s havinga nip of something. The flasks those men have, jewels crustedin them. Whatever it takes to hide the money. But they’regenerous though with sharing what they got. Makes it so Idon’t even mind the horseshit.But Louis doesn’t like it when I come. The track’s no placefor a woman, that’s what Louis says. Of course he says that.He doesn’t like the way the men there look at me. I thoughthe wanted me to get married, but Louis doesn’t trust any ofthose men, at least not with me. But he’s one of those men. Ilike to kid him.I said: Rosie found you at the track. How’d she find you?I poke him with my finger.I said: Is it cause you’re so tall, Louis?He doesn’t answer me.I said: Cause you stick out like a giraffe?Nothing. Louis keeps his cards so close it’s like there’s nodeck at all.I think I’ll eat all the chocolates in the shop today. All thechocolate kisses, all the chocolate bars. I’m going to tear offtheir wrapper with my teeth. And I’ll eat all the Squirrel NutZippers and Tootsie Rolls. Chew till my jaw hurts. And allthe caramel creams and butterscotch twists and peanut butternuggets and those sweetie almond treats. I’ll suck on all thethe lollies till they’re gone.I’ll eat and I’ll eat and I’ll eat just so I never have to look atany of those stinking candies ever again.

Mazie’s Diary, January 3, 1917Last night Rosie and I split a bottle of whiskey. This was afterI came home, on time for once. I came in to say good nightand the bottle was next to her in bed. I couldn’t tell how longshe’d been drinking. All I knew was she was already knee-deepin it. She was mourning something, I didn’t know what. Louiswas nowhere. Jeanie was sleeping. I got under the covers withRosie, and she handed me the bottle.I said: What are you thinking about?She said: Our parents.I said: Well that’ll do it.She said: Do you remember what happened in Topsfield?That story again. She and I had talked about it before,when Jeanie wasn’t around. Topsfield, that was right beforeshe left us behind.We were all out together, a real, happy family for the day.Papa holding me with one hand, Jeanie in his other arm,Rosie wedged between him and Mama. Papa was not handsome.His eyes drooped, and his skin was the color of cold,watery soup. And those lines around his mouth and eyesmade him always look furious, which he was. Lines don’t lie.But he was tall and young and had so much hair, and I rememberhim as strong. That day, out in the world, he wasour father.We walked together like that. A ruddy-cheeked barkerand his wife, the world’s fattest woman. There was the darkskinnedrubber man, skinny as stretched taffy. His face was socalm, like turning himself inside and out was nothing to him.He was born to bend. I remember the sun was bright, and itwas nearly fall, but it was still warm. I was squinting, seeingthe world between tiny slits in my eyes. Men with low-slunghats waved hello to Papa. Everyone knew Horvath Phillips, forbetter or for worse.But to Rosie I said: I remember that he left us that day.Because I knew that she wanted that to be my only memory.He told us to stay put, said he’d be back, sliding that flaskfrom his pocket as he walked away. There were men in whiteface paint pretending to tug on an imaginary rope. The sunbegan to set. Jeanie was tired and we found a bench andMama took her in her lap. My skin stung from the sun, mystomach was sick from sweets.Mama said: Should we try to find him? I don’t know.She was talking to Rosie, who was the only one of us oldenough to understand that the question was not a simple one.But I can’t remember her saying anything. She was just simmering.Mama said: Yes, we’ll wait.Then it was dark and the mimes were gone, most of thefamilies too. Just young people floating around, also somelonely-looking men. Mama still kept turning her head around,thinking he’d come back.Rosie said: If you don’t go find him, I will.They argued about Rosie wandering around at night byherself. Rosie started fighting for us to just go home already.Mama didn’t want to walk the roads by herself. She washere. Found the most terrifying man in town to marry, thatcouldn’t have helped much either.Mama finally gave in to Rosie, and agreed we should tryto find him. I remember this sigh of her shoulder, and thenJeanie nearly rolled off her lap.She wasn’t pretty anymore then, Mama. Her hair was thin.She pulled clumps of it out, and so did he, when he was mad.She still had the knockout hips though. I walked behind heras we went to find him and I remember those hips, becauseI have those hips too. A little girl with her arms around hermama, her face sunk in her hips.Rosie had known where he was all night. Mama did, too.Those two had just been playing a game with each other forhours. Because back behind the big top was an open fieldlit up with lanterns and white candles, and filled with peopledancing in a frenzy. There was a small stage in the middle ofit, packed with men playing all kinds of instruments, accordians,fiddles, guitars, a washboard and spoons. A man sang ina deep growl, French, now I know, but I didn’t then. Therewas a sign at the front of the stage, the Cajun Dancers is whatthey were called.The audience was so caught up in the moment, movingfaster and faster, laughing and grinning, they were almost hysterical.I could feel the heat coming off their bodies, and thenI was nearly hysterical too. The lust of those people is a lustthat I hold in my heart. They were gorgeous and free.Mama put Jeanie down next to me, and we held hands, andthen we looked at each other. While Rosie and Mama scannedthe crowd, we began to dance our own dance. We were nevergoing to sit still, Jeanie and me. Not like good girls did. IThe grass tickled the backs of my legs.I looked up and there was Rosie, pulling away fromMama, and working her way through the crowd. She hadfound Papa. He looked happy, is what I remember thinking.His eyes were closed, bliss, and his face was relaxed, thelines erased for the moment. He embraced a young, plump,black-haired woman in a long green gown. The dress roseand crashed while they danced. I don’t know if he knew thewoman or not, if she was the reason why he was so content,or if it was just the dancing. Maybe he just loved thefreedom. More than once I have wondered if it would havebeen easier to forgive him for all that he did if he had justup and left our home, rather than stayed put and laid hiscruelty upon us.I said: I remember you grabbing his arm, and I rememberyou pointing to us. You shamed him. You were so bold.Papa bowed to the woman he had been dancing with, andthen walked with Rosie back through the crowd, which somehowmanaged to keep moving and part for them at the sametime. Or at least that’s how I remember it: Everything fadedinto the background except for Rosie and Papa.I said: It was a long ride home.Rosie said: I felt like I aged ten years in that time.I said: She tucked us in so quietly that night. She kissed everypart of our face.Rosie said: I didn’t get to go to sleep. He took me outback.I said: I know.Rosie said: Until I passed out from the pain.I said: Oh, Rosie.She was too drunk. She sounded confused.I said: You were right, and he was wrong.Rosie said: I’m sorry I left you there.I said: We didn’t blame you for leaving us. I didn’t, anyway.Jeanie didn’t even know what was happening.Rosie said: And I came back for you didn’t I?I said: You did.Rosie said: I was always trying to do the right thing by useven if she wouldn’t.I said: You did.She said: I take care of you, right?I said: Rosie, we love you. You know we love you.Rosie said: I’m not bad, am I?I said: You’re not. You’re a good girl.We drank until we slept. Rosie more than me. When Iwoke, there was Jeanie, sleeping between us. I don’t know ifshe heard us. I wouldn’t want her to hear it. I wouldn’t wanther to remember any of it.Mazie’s Diary, March 1, 1917The sun was rising when I took off my shoes this morning.Rosie stood at the door and stared me down. I turned myback on her and wrapped the covers around me, put my headon the pillow, and prayed for peace. God heard me.I don’t know much about praying. It feels like you could betrading on one thing for another, and maybe the thing you’retrading isn’t really yours in the first place.Rosie just crawled into bed with me. No yelling. We startedwhispering to each other.I remember when Jeanie and I were little we used to crawlinto bed with her and Louis and rub her blue-tinted fingersand toes, breathing on them with our hot breath. All I wantedwas to be warm and close like that forever.She said: What if you get a baby in there?She rubbed my stomach. When she touched it I felt ill. Thelast thing I wanted was a baby to lug around all day. And I’dnever fit into my pretty dresses again.She said: Then no respectable man will ever want to marryyou.I didn’t want nothing to do with marriage with a respectableman or any other kind of man. Not once in my lifedid I ever dream of my wedding day, no white dresses, nogoddamn diamond rings. I only ever dreamed of freedom.The love I have is with the streets of this city.

Mazie’s Diary, March 20, 1917Oh, Rosie. My poor, dear Rosie.This morning she took us girls to a dusty little gypsy parloron Essex, empty except for a few plants and a folding tableand chairs and a vase with a peacock feather in it. I didn’t wantto be there, and neither did Jeanie. Golly, Jeanie’s so prettynow, skinny and pretty, with her pale skin and puffy lips andmoony eyes. I swear she floats when she walks. Still she had asour face, just like I did. After being sweet for so long, turnsout she’s a Phillips girl, after all.The gypsy pushed aside some curtains and came in fromthe back room. She was wearing a chain of thick gold coinsaround her neck, and the coins clinked together as she moved.find that glamorous. To me it’s just another gypsy, butRosie has always had a thing for them.At first she acted like we weren’t there. We could have beenghosts. She lit some incense on the table in front of us, wateredsome plants in the front window. Then I noticed theplants were dead, gray leaves, stems tipped over. I felt like Iwas nowhere all of a sudden.The gypsy sat down at the table with us, told us hername was Gabriela. She smiled at Rosie, and Rosie smiledat her. There was a love there. She looked into my eyesand held them there. The long stare. Searching for something,but I didn’t give her a damn thing. Then she lookedat Jeanie’s eyes, and then back into Rosie’s eyes. We werejust sitting there waiting, all of us. All right already, iswhat I was thinking. We get it. You know how to hold aroom.She told us we were there for our sister, like I needed to bereminded Rosie existed. How can I forget?She didn’t have an accent, like other Roma I’d met. Shehad thick eyebrows, and they made her look serious. Shecould have been old, she could have been young, I couldn’ttell.She said: I needed to meet you in order to help your sister.You are all in the same home. You are living one life together.You are family. You are sisters. You are connected in this life,and the last one, and the next one, too.A scam if I ever saw one, I thought. I couldn’t wait to tellLouis when I got home. I looked at Jeanie, thinking she’d beon my side. But she was drooling over everything the gypsysaid. What a sucker.and I groused, but finally I put my hand in hers. With her indexfinger, she traced a few lines on my hand.She said: Life, money, good.She was nodding her head.She said: Well, money will come and go. Mostly comethough.Her hands were cool and soft. Her nails were clean. I admirea well-kept hand. She rubbed a thumb along a line acrossthe top of my hand, and then a line beneath that.She said: But this is no good.She squeezed my hand tightly and released it.She said: No love for you. You will spend your life alone.I pulled my hands back.I said: I got company whenever I like.Rosie shushed me. I don’t care, I don’t need anyone tellingme about my life.Jeanie said: Now me.She shoved her hands in the gypsy’s. Gabriela smiled atJeanie like she loved her. The warm glow of a con artist. Shetold her she had a strong love line, and she pointed to somethingon her head. She told her she will marry well. A richman. She asked if she liked rich men. As if she wouldn’t wanta rich man! I watched Jeanie’s face. She was considering it,though she didn’t answer. But she smiled. Maybe she smiledlike it was funny. I would have said, Who cares? But nobodywas asking me. Nobody was telling me I was going to marrysomeone special.Gabriela turned to Rosie, and Rosie slid her hand in hers soeasily it was like they were husband and wife.Rosie said: You already know what it says.didn’t know why it was so serious.Rosie said: Now that you’ve met them, look again.Gabriela said: They are strong these two, as you said, butwho they are will not change what will happen to you. Theylove you. I don’t need to look at their palms to see that.They’re going to be who they’re going to be.Then she brought Rosie’s hand to her lips and kissed it. Itwas a sweet vision.She said: I still think it can happen, Rosie.Rosie started crying and then Gabriela swept herself up intothe back room, and came back with a handful of bottles. Shesmacked each bottle down in front of Rosie.She said: I’ve asked everyone I know, and they’ve asked everyonethey know too. I went uptown, I went downtown, Iwent across the river, and I gathered these for you.She handed Rosie a piece of paper.She said: I wrote down instructions. How much, how often.And there’s an address on there, a Chinaman. He sticksneedles in you and they say it lights a fire within your womb.She held Rosie’s hand again.She said: I lit candles for you, my friend.Now Rosie was sobbing, and then we held her. So our poorRosie can’t have babies. I never knew, but how could I? Wewere her babies all along, I thought we were enough for her.I didn’t know she wanted anyone but us. She watched overus better than our own mother ever did. She’s our sister andour mother. Oh, all this time her heart was breaking and wedidn’t even know.

George FlickerOh you want to know about the gypsies? What do you thinkyou know about the gypsies? That they’re a bunch of criminals,probably. That’s what people always thought aboutthem. My mother swore they spoke the truth. My friendsfrom Little Italy, they wouldn’t go anywhere near them.They’re superstitious, and they were afraid of the curses. Ihave only ever been afraid of what I could see right in front ofmy face. Because I have seen enough. I don’t need to imagineanything worse.But the gypsies were just the same as you and me. They livedhere just like everyone else. They walked the same streets. It’strue that some of them were criminals. But you can’t judge awhole people by the actions of just a few. But that’s what we dohere in this country. We do it in this world. I’ve lived such a longlife. I thought things would be better by now. Every day I stillwatch the news. I listen to people talk. Things are not as bad asthey once were, but not as good as I had hoped they would besomeday. It’s the year 2000 already, and there’s still all kinds ofmesses in this country. I had higher hopes for this world. Eh, butwhat are you going to do about it anyway?Mazie’s Diary, June 16, 1917Rosie’s sick on the couch again. Hands on her belly. Sheswings from happy to sad in a heartbeat. We wrapped her upin blankets. I told her to stop taking whatever the gypsy gaveher. Rosie, please stop, I was begging her.She told me I was a fool and didn’t know what I was talkingabout, that things take time, life takes time. But it doesn’tseem right, this much pain.longer? Gypsy con or not, it doesn’t change Rosie’s dream.I can’t blame her for having one, though. I would neverblame anyone for wishing for something more from thislife.

George FlickerThen I was old enough to go to war, or at least I told themI was. I was a few months shy of legal but they didn’t checktoo hard. I would have said anything though to get outof that cramped apartment! The taller I got, the smaller itseemed. And I wanted to see the world. That I would befighting in a war didn’t scare me for some reason. MaybeI wasn’t so brave, maybe I was just stupid instead. I won’ttalk about what happened though, what I saw there. Youknow, we’re not like your generation where we need to talkabout every little thing. Sometimes a bad thing happens andthen you’re done with it.But anyway I didn’t see Mazie again for five years, so I can’thelp you out during that particular time period. Because Iwent to France and then I stayed there when the war was overand lived there and worked there and had a life there. I livedwith a French girl for a year even. And she was really something,I’ll tell you. Ooh-la-la, I know. [Laughs.] I’ve had myfun, I’ve had my fun. Eventually I had to come back though.My mother got sick, and of course, there was all that troublewith Uncle Al.

Twenty years old. I’m sure I should be having more fun.What is this pull in me that makes me want trouble? MonthsI’ve been quiet and good, even though the heat on the streetswas making me feel sexy, wanting to dance and drink. To kisssomeone. Passing by alleys at night and seeing girls and boysplaying. Fingers on lips, fingers on tits, I miss it. It’s been solong since I’ve lain down with someone. Most nights are withRosie now. I lost this summer to her belly.

Mazie’s Diary, December 13, 1917Rosie lost another baby. This time it felt like she was pregnantfor only a minute.Now she’s flat on her back again in the living room. Weeksand weeks of it, and there’s a dent in the couch now, I can seethe mattress sagging beneath her. I swear the springs will sinkstraight through the floor.She grabs my hand but squeezes too hard and it hurts butI try not to make a noise. She asks me to stroke her head butshifts her head, squirms beneath my fingers. Rub my feet, shetells me.But then she says: No, you’re doing it wrong. No, don’ttouch me.Watches me with her eagle eye, thinking I’ll leave her.Louis sits in the kitchen, head down, in the food. He closedthe theater for a few days this week. Jeanie’s nowhere I cansee, smart girl.I take nips in the bedroom. I can’t go to the whiskey, butSomething’s going to break soon. I got no control over myselfand I like it.

Mazie’s Diary, January 4, 1918I wasn’t ready to go home yet but there was nobody left in thebar worth talking to. Talked to a bum on the street instead,an old fella. We split whatever was in his bottle and I gave hima smoke. I was feeling tough. I asked him how long he’d beenon the streets.He said: Longer than you’ve been alive, girlie. You gotta betough to last that long.He beat his chest.I said: I could survive out here.He said: You don’t want to try.I said: I could do it. You wanna see me?He said: You got a home, you’re lucky.I said: Why don’t I feel that way?Then he got gentle with me.He said: If someone loves you, go home to them.A bad wind blew in and I grew suddenly, terribly cold. Icouldn’t bear the night for another minute. I handed him therest of my smokes and wandered home.

Mazie’s Diary, January 5, 1918Rosie was trying to sweet-talk me early this morning. A nicechange from yelling I guess.She said: Don’t you want a sweetheart?I said: The whole world’s my sweetheart.

Friday, 26 June 2015

I am suffering from Deadline-itis. Two deadlines glaring at me with fanged intentions. As always during these stressful moments, it seems that all the world apart from me is in holiday mode; either on holiday or about to depart.
I go out so rarely at present due to the pressure of work that when I receive an invitation from friends who have arrived here on the coast, it is a rare treat and reminds me that the Côte d’Azur is more than a Spaghetti Junction for tourists. It has some quite remarkable locations and buildings, each with its own story to tell.

One of the Carlton's Belle Epoch cupolas

According to legend the hotel's twin cupolas were modelled on the breasts of the dancer-actress-courtesan, Carolina Otero, christened 'la Belle Otero'. Until recent renovations, the restaurant on the hotel's top floor was named La Belle Otero in celebration of the Spanish beauty.

The friends I linked up with this week were staying at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes. A seven-storey linen-white building boasting 343 rooms as well as ten capacious penthouse suites on the top floor with views to the Bay of Cannes beaches and the Mediterranean. ‘Luxe’ as the French say. Deluxe beyond my dreams. My pals were staying in the Grace Kelly suite. We drank champagne on their private terrace and enjoyed the sun descending over the water. One of them asked me whether I had known that the Carlton with its Belle Epoch domes had been built in 1911. I would have mistakenly dated it a little later and we began a conversation about the birth of tourism along this coast. Antibes, Golfe Juan and the Cap d’Antibes were the haunts of the Americans whereas the British and the Russians preferred Cannes. Nice was more cosmopolitan. Each of these three resorts has its grand hotel. The Negresco in Nice, the Carlton in Cannes and the mythic Hotel du Cap right on the water at Antibes. And each hotel has a remarkable and glittering history.

So, as I will not be going on holiday this year I will visit each of them here!

Garden view Hotel du Cap

The Grand Hotel du Cap. "Un établissment mythique et incomparable". Its first incarnation was as the Villa Soleil, built in 1869 as a private residence byHippolte de Villemessant, the founder of Le Figaro newspaper. He very generously offered his fabulous Napoleon III-styled pad to ‘writers seeking inspiration’. (If only!)
In 1887 it was sold to Antoine Sella, an Italian hotelier. It opened as the Grand Hotel du Cap in 1889 and has never looked back. Its Eden Roc pavilion was built in 1914. The same year as its heated seawater pool, which is truly invigorating to swim in, was cut out of the Mediterranean cliff-side. Thirty-three cabanas were built into the rocks facing the sea. Marc Chagall spent time drawing sketches in one of these cabanas.
I am assuming that the pool was heated back in 1914, because it would have been used exclusively for winter swimming. During the long hot months of summer, this coastline was deserted. Until the early twenties when high society and the intellectual elite, led by the wild energy of hugely wealthy Americans, took to the beaches and to villas nesting in pine groves to party, paint, write and compose through all seasons of the year.

The Murphy couple once rented the Hotel du Cap for an entire summer. This was unheard of in the early 1920s because at that stage this coast was exclusively a winter resort. It is claimed that it was Coco Chanel who invented ‘the tan’ in 1923 when she was photographed in a backless dress exposing skin that had caught the sun while on a French Riviera cruise. Up to that point, weathered flesh was associated with the working classes, but from that summer onwards, it was chic to allow one’s skin to be tanned. Sporting a suntan became a sign of wealth and beauty.

Coco and Dog

Scott Fitzgerald, one of the Murphys' friends and regular house guests immortalised the Hotel du Cap as the Hotel des Etrangers in Tender is the Night. Most of the major film stars who are flown in for the Cannes festival stay at the Grand Hotel du Cap. Past visitors have included Orson Welles, Ernest Hemingway, Marlene Dietrich, Churchill, De Gaulle, J.F. Kennedy and the Burtons who honeymooned there.

The Cap d'Antibes has ideal sailing waters. One of the reasons why the Greeks in the 5th century B.C founded Antibes (Antipolis) as one of their northern trading posts

In 1964, Rudolph August Oetker, a German industrialist, was sailing with his wife along the Riviera coast and spotted the hotel. Five years later he acquired it. This very prestigious address set in eleven acres of magnificent palm and pine gardens is now part of their “bouquet” of international hotels known as the Masterpiece Collection. So exclusive is it that it only opens for the season in late April before the film festival and closes in October. Until recently, it was renowned for accepting only cash. Guests either paid their bills from suitcases of money or wired the funds on ahead. This policy changed a couple of years back.

The Carlton Hotel (now managed by Intercontinental). The site of 58 Boulevard de la Croisette was purchased in 1908 by the British businessman, Henry Ruhl, who invested in luxury hotels. In order to build on the location he began looking for investors and found the majority of the money from the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia, youngest son of Emperor Alexander III.
The Carlton was opened in early January 1911, but reached it definitive version in 1913 after Ruhl had purchased an abutting hotel, La Plage, and used the space to create a new wing for the Carlton. Ruhl chose the name Carlton because there was a hotel in London with the same name. It is Scandinavian for 'town of the free man'.
Grand Duke Michael, rather a ladies man, had been sojourning regularly in Cannes since the late 1890s. He financed the construction a golf course at neighbouring Mandelieu-La Napoule. Back in Russia he spoke of the Riviera town of Cannes as at a 'city of elegant sports'. Soon Russian high society was flocking to this coast and spending vast sums of money. Their wealth and extravagant living, along with members of the British royalty who also frequented this Riviera spot, certainly put the town on the map.

The Carlton's Belle Epoch luxury only lasted one year due to the outbreak of war, at which point the hotel was requisitioned as a field hospital. One of its more famous patients was the writer Blaise Cendrars who in 1915 was seriously injured and was obliged to have his arm amputated at the makeshift hospital.
There were tough days post-war for the Carlton. Europe, France, was in a slump and the Russian Revolution of 1917 caused it to lose vital clients and wealth. In 1919, it was on the market for one million francs.
In 1920, Coco Chanel was in Cannes with her boyfriend of the moment, Grand Duc Dmitri Romanov (nephew of Michael who had helped finance the establishment). She was there to meet with an exiled Franco-Russian perfumer to create her own essence. The result was Chanel 5. Brilliant and forward-thinking as she was, Coco was the first designer to use her name to brand her perfume.

In January 1922, the Carlton was given the opportunity to host the League of Nations conference which unfortunately did not achieve its goals but it did give birth to the Societé des Nations which has evolved into the United Nations. A political gathering of such eminence gave much-needed publicity to the hotel.
Fast forwarding to 2011 when the G20 was hosted in Cannes, Obama occupied the same suite as had Colonel Harvey, the US ambassador who had represented the United States at the League of Nations in 1922.

Grace Kelly met her in Prince, Rainier III of Monaco, at a prearranged rendezvous at this hotel. At the time she was shooting To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Many scenes were set at the hotel. The Rainier-Kelly courtship was brief and Hitchcock was a witness at their wedding. Fascinatingly, the Greek shipping tycoon Aristote Onassis had been attempting to set up a marriage between Rainier and Marilyn Monroe.

While on the subject of 'catching thieves', the Carlton has been the target of several high-profile jewellery heists. Two in particular, one in 1994 when the thieves got away with over $60 million worth of jewellery and precious stones and another in 2013 when the stolen cache was reported to have been somewhere near $137 million. In both cases, nobody has been charged, no criminal cited as responsible.
Thriller stories in their own right!

Negresco, Nice

The Negresco in Nice. The last of this trio of grand hotels to be constructed, the Negresco dates back to 1913. A Romanian innkeeper's son, Henri Negrescu, who at the age of fifteen left his home town of Bucharest to head for Paris to become a gypsy violinist, was the inspiration behind the birth of this pink-domed beauty. After Paris, Negrescu worked in hotels in London and Monte Carlo, but decided to settle on on the Riviera coast where luxury tourism was a burgeoning business. He took the job as director of the restaurant of the Municipal Casino in Nice. It was here he commenced plans to build a sumptuous hotel to attract the very wealthiest of guests. Once the finance was in place, he commissioned the star architect Eduard-Jean Niermans to design the hotel. The design included the pink dome (see above). Whether Niermans or Negrescu wanted the dome to flag to their very wealthy clients that the Negresco would match the style and luxury of the Carlton in Cannes, I do not know. In its hall hangs a magnificent crystal chandelier. It boasts 16,309 crystals and was crafted by Baccarat for Czar Nicholas II who was never able to take delivery of it. It remains one of the largest crystal chandeliers in the world. The hotel opened its doors on 8th January 1913.

Baccarat crystal chandelier, Hotel Negresco

The hotel was listed as a National Historic Building in 2003

When WWI commenced, the Negresco was also taken for use as as a hospital. Unfortunately for Henri Negrescu the downturn in tourism after the war and the renovations required to give the hotel back its five-star status led him into dire financial straits. He never recovered his investments. The hotel was seized by creditors in 1920 and sold to a Belgian company. Negrescu died in Paris that same year, a broken and ruined man at 52 years old.

Henri Negrescu

1868-1920

The hotel has had a checkered history with some challenging financial ups and downs over the decades until 1957 when it was sold to the Augier family. Renovated by Madame Jeanne Augier to a standard that included mink bedspreads, it has clawed back its quality rating. Today, its Chantecler restaurant has two Michelin stars, and the hotel is a member of the Leading Hotels of the World.

Among the legion of famous names who have passed through its doors, Salvador Dali comes to mind. I do smile when I think of him tucked up beneath his mink cover.

The travel writer Eric Newby wrote glowingly of a meal he had eaten in the Chantecler restaurant at the end of his journey for the book, On the Shores of the Mediterranean.

Having written two Mediterranean travel books myself (The Olive Route and The Olive Tree) travelling as a woman alone to some pretty dangerous territories, there are a few handfuls of mud I could sling at Theroux, but not here. Here, I will finish my visit to three hotels built to feed the dreams of the wealthiest of tourists and this desk-bound writer by a quote from Theroux's chapter on Nice.

(Note: Paul T does not give the name of his 'friend's' book!).

'There was a placard in front of the Negresco's Chantecler restaurant with a quotation from my friend Eric Newby, cobbled together from the six pages he devotes to the Negresco in his book on his trip around the Mediterranean: "One of the greatest restaurant (sic) in France… newest Mecca for gourmets… most beautifully presented meal … my entire life …best I ever ate or am likely to eat," blah-blah-blah.

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